Opinion: Republicans need to confirm Lorretta Lynch and move on

For the past few weeks, the Republican-controlled Senate has botched the nomination of Loretta Lynch to Office of Attorney General. Since the writing of this article, 20 days have passed since the Senate Judiciary committee approved of Lynch, and she has been waiting on the Senate to confirm her ever since. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s Facebook page recently stated that since first being nominated in November, Lynch’s confirmation has been “the longest any Attorney General nominee has waited in 30 years!”

What had started out as an act of good faith by the lame-duck Democratic majority last fall has created a nightmare. Lynch’s very job is being used as a bargaining chip by Republicans to continue what appears to be their usual plan to oppose President Obama in any way possible. All this has done is raise partisanship in Congress and create dangerous precedence for any future president nominating cabinet officials through a congress opposite of his or her party.

At the moment, Republicans are using her nomination as leverage in a recent anti-human trafficking bill. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to bring Lynch’s vote to the floor until Democrats stop blocking the bill. The initially bipartisan bill is being blocked due to a mistake where Democrats didn’t read the entire bill while it was in committee. They in turn missed an amendment added by Republicans that prohibited funding towards abortion.

This is not the first timeLynch’s confirmation has been delayed by the newly elected Republican majority in the Senate. After losing the mid-term election last November, it was agreed that the lame-duck Democratic majority would not go through her confirmation, and they would allow Republicans to handle in January instead.

Yet as soon as she went to the Senate Judiciary committee, her confirmation has only dragged on even further. The committee didn’t vote to send her to the Senate floor until the end of February. Republicans’ main opposition to her was her support of President Obama’s executive action on immigration, which is the main reason nearly all Republicans plan on voting against her when her vote comes to the floor (whenever that may be).

This is the biggest problem with her confirmation and it could permanently derail any prospect of Lynch being attorney general. Right now the vote count is at exactly 50 votes in favor of her, which means Vice-President Joe Biden will perform a tie breaking vote. This is the absolute bare minimum of votes needed in order is confirm Lynch. Democrats unanimously support her nomination along with a small handful of Republicans. All it would take is one of those on the right to switch their vote, and the Obama administration will be forced to go through the entire process again with another less favorable candidate.

It is absolutely unacceptable that Republicans are going against a President’s nominee simply because she agrees with the policy of her future boss. Why else would the President nominate her? She is very qualified for the job and has years of experience as a US attorney. Yet the Republicans continue to politicize her confirmation. Even from a strategic standpoint, it only looks like Republicans are trying impede the Obama administration in as many ways as possible in hopes of a Republican win in 2016. All this is doing is giving Democrats an excuse to vigorously oppose a Republican president in the future if they ever retake Congress, and all that will do is bring even further instability in our legislature.

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